I am researching a wedding ring offering and am hoping that somebody
on Orchid might have a view:

My plan is to take a cast of my customer’s finger and then render it
in plaster (or possibly bronze if I need an anvil). From this I can
take a cross section which should give me an exact inside shape for
the shank of their wedding ring.

It strikes me as quite a nifty way to come up with the shape for non
round rings that ergonomically suit the client. Has anybody tried
this before? I imagine some size tweaking will be required to achieve
a good fit and get over the knuckle, and views from this group will
save me many iterations in silver to get it right.

I did it once, years ago at college, I cast a plaster finger and
sawed through it to get the cross section. Make a two part plaster
mould first. You could then build up in wax around the plaster, if
you keep it damp the wax wont stick too permanently, then scrape off
a little to allow for shrinkage. It is an unnerving feeling to saw
through a finger even if it is only plaster, I can still remember
doing it.

I’m not exactly sure what advice/info you are looking for. But an
easy way to do a mold of the finger is with “body-double” a product
by smooth-on amazing stuff. I made molds of my ears, but as a test
run I did a mold of my finger (much easier than the ear i might add).
There is a fast set that is ready to de-mold in five minutes.

the company’s website is http://www.smooth-on.com In addition to
the mold making materials, they have a variety of things to make
positives. I made a bunch of plastic fingers which are actually
really fun to display rings on, kind of weird, and creepy b/c they
are so realistic, but lots of fun. I even painted the fingernail!

anyway, the usual disclaimer, no i don’t work for them, have stock
in their company or anything like that. The products are wonderful
and the people are really helpful if you need to call and talk to
them. sounds like a great idea to get a good fit!

I actually prefer the “finger shaped” ring and use a rounded square
ring mandrel. My son asked me to make wedding rings for him and his
bride and they chose the rounded square shape. Imagine our surprise
when the minister said, asking for the rings during the ceremony:
“These two perfect circles symbolize…” He’d never said during the
rehearsal exactly what he’d say in the ceremony.

While not wishing to be a wet blanket I don’t think your idea of
making a ring to exactly fit the profile of a customer’s finger is
practical. You hit on one difficulty yourself in that the ring needs
to be large enough to slide over the knuckle. There are, however,
other considerations. Firstly, the finger is not a constant size -
it swells and shrinks depending on any number of factors - how hot
you are, whether you are exercising or resting, whether it is held
high or down by your side etc… Also, the size of a person’s finger
changes with age and, presumably, you are intending the wedding ring
to fit for a good number of years. Secondly you speak of changing
the size to allow for it to slip over the knuckle but how would you
do that? If the ring is made to the profile of the finger it will not
be round and therefore could not be resized by a round ring sizer
could it? As flesh is so pliable while gold is not, I would suggest
that you follow accepted practice and make the ring conventionally
round and allow the finger to adapt to it.